Oh, how I want to gloat.

It is an amazing thing to have voted on the same page as 66.8 million other Americans for President-elect Barack Obama. However, I am quite certain that several members of my immediate family were among the more than 59 million Americans who voted for somebody else.

Actually, “voted for somebody else” doesn’t seem to capture the depth and breadth of the great divide between the two major party candidates and campaigns. This wasn’t just an election; in some parts of America, this was a holy war. So in my mother’s house, as I’m sure will be the case in many others around the country, the 2008 holiday season carries with it an interesting dynamic. As I prepare for what is certain to be a dicey weekend with family, I wonder:

Now that the campaign has ended, what do we do with the passionate feelings it evoked?

In “Dealing with the Stress of a Disappointing Election,” Elizabeth Scott, M.S., offers a number of suggestions for families coping with the aftermath: Set boundaries, separate yourself from the campaign season. Take all that campaign energy and funnel it into volunteering for a non-profit. Share your feelings with someone on the same side of the political aisle. Pick your favorite stress-relieving techniques and practice them regularly: meditation (I recommend the wonderful meditations offered by Jan Lundy in “Pockets of Peace”), physical exercise and journaling are the author’s favorites.

All excellent ideas. But what happens when somebody quotes Bill O’Reilly at the dinner table? Or when a conversation takes a hard left turn toward the topic of gay marriage? If you’re like me, your face starts feeling a bit warm and your thoughts martial around your most deeply held political and moral views. Some of that, I think, we just can’t help. It’s perfectly natural to have a physical reaction to a stressful thought.

It’s what we do next that really counts.

Dr. Wayne Dyer explained his choice in The Power of Intention. Confronted with family members whose political views were far from his own, he began to engage, rather than arguing with them. When someone expressed a particularly offensive point of view, he would say, “That’s interesting, I never thought of it that way.” Over time, his family members’ views actually seemed to shift. And certainly, his own level of tension diminished.

I couldn’t imagine handling my family the same way, until someone close to me became my BFF on Facebook, where I quite often post political stories and opinions. Within days, he had posted argumentative responses, words I told myself I couldn’t let pass. About half-way through my first scathing diatribe, I stopped. It occurred to me that I wasn’t flaming some anonymous poster. This was someone I loved. Our relationship, although never exactly close, has always been loving and warm. We’re lucky that way. And I realized, in a state of gratitude for this blessing, I could no longer see a point to the argument we were poised to have about people neither one of us had ever met.

Instead of writing a response, I sent a very short note calling for an end to the on-line debate. I did not by any means engage in a dialogue. But I did find a way to move away from the well-trodden path of reaction, toward a more proactive response that kept me from saying things I wouldn’t be able to take back.

And like the poet Robert Frost, I believe:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
–The Road Not Taken (1915)

So here’s my suggestion: As you sit down to dinner this Thanksgiving Day, start out on that “less traveled” road, by suggesting a new tradition. Ask each person to look into the eyes of the person to their left and say, “I love you, and I am so grateful you are here.” Even if it doesn’t make that difference for everyone, I promise it will for you.